The Duke of Wellington's train and other locomotives being readied for departure from Liverpool, 15 September 1830

Open carriages on the Liverpool-Manchester railway, 1830.

The Liverpool-Manchester railway, 1830.

The Liverpool-Manchester Railway at Chat Moss, 1833.

On the 15th September 1830 the Liverpool & Manchester Railway was ready for its grand official opening. This was an event of national celebration. The Duke of Wellington, Prime Minister and Hero of Waterloo, headed the VIP guests. Instead of converted waggons they travelled in ornate passenger carriages. The great cavalcade set off from Liverpool and steamed majestically through the Olive Mount Cutting. Eight locomotives, all built by the Stephensons, ran in procession using both tracks. George Stephenson himself drove the "Northumbrian", his latest engine. It was a triumphant day.

Northumbrian.

Sadly the day was to end in tragedy. During a water stop at Parkside the guests were told to not get off the train. However despite this warning, many guests got off and strolled about the tracks as if out for a walk in Hyde Park. The Duke of Wellington called the local MP, William Huskisson, to his carriage to offer his hand in friendship. As he stood by the Duke's carriage there was consternation among the guests as a locomotive was bearing down on them on the second track. Guests scattered but William Huskisson seemed dazed and didn't know what to do. Unfortunately he ended up clinging onto the Duke's carriage door. He sadly was hit by the locomotive "Rocket" and his leg was run over.

Replica of Rocket and its passenger coaches on the opening of the Liverpool-Manchester railway.

Quickly the "Northumbrian" and a carriage whisked Mr Huskisson to Eccles for medical help but it was all in vain and William Huskisson sadly died. He was the first passenger to be a victim of a railway accident.

The site of the former Parkside station. The white memorial marks the location of the accident.

Original tablet from the Huskisson memorial, now in the National Railway Museum.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Gg0kC1jNsQThe Roundhouse featured in The London Nobody Knows, a 1967 film narrated by James Mason.

Tats and Aloha will the interested in the description of an early Pink Floyd gig in the (then) leaky, rat-infested building, which it appears was rather more of a maintenance shed that a place for actually reversing locomotives.

...features my workplace, Aldgate Tube station, through which at that time ran steam-powered locomotives. Indeed, the platform at Aldgate was where the engines took on water, necessitating a delay to passengers of some minutes. Some things never change: to this day, the platforms at Aldgate are the only place the Line Controller can stable a train he doesn't quite know what to do with, which still drives impatient passengers to fury.

Mycroft Holmes visits his brother Sherlock with a little problem...

Wiki:

The monotony of pea-soup-fog-shrouded London is broken by a sudden visit from Holmes’s brother Mycroft. He has come about some missing, secret submarine plans. Seven of the ten pages — three are still missing — were found with Arthur Cadogan West’s body. He was a young clerk in a government office at Royal Arsenal, Woolwich, whose body was found next to the Underground tracks near the Aldgate tube station, his head crushed. He had little money with him (although there appears to have been no robbery), theatre tickets, and curiously, no Underground ticket. The three missing pages by themselves could enable one of Britain’s enemies to build a Bruce-Partington submarine.

Underground"-branded Tube map from 1908 showing the District and Metropolitan lines with Aldgate at right and Kensington at lower left.

It seems clear that Cadogan West fell from a train and that he stole the plans meaning to sell them, but the mystery is truly complex:

How did Cadogan West meet his end?

If he was thrown off a train, what was he doing at Aldgate, well past the stop where he presumably would have gone?

If he had made an appointment with a foreign agent to sell the plans, would he not have kept his evening free instead of buying theatre tickets for himself and his fiancée?

How did he get into the Underground without a ticket, or did someone take it?

Why can no evidence of violence be found in any Underground coach?

How is it that Cadogan’s head was crushed and yet there was very little bleeding by the track where he was found?

Inspector Lestrade tells Holmes that a passenger has seen fit to report hearing a thud at about the location in question, as though a body had fallen on the track. He could not see anything, however, owing to the thick fog.

After an examination of the track near Aldgate, Holmes reaches an astonishing and unusual conclusion: Cadogan West had been killed elsewhere, was deposited on the roof of an Underground train, and fell off when the jarring action of going over the points at Aldgate shook the coach.

I've worked at two other Tube stations with an historic steam connection: Wapping and Rotherhithe.

THE BRUNEL WAPPING-ROTHERHITHE THAMES TUNNEL

Construction of the first sub-aqueous tunnel in the world. Originally designed just for foot passengers, it was eventually converted to railway use and for many decades carried East London Line Tube passengers under the Thames.

Entrance shaft to the Thames Tunnel at what is now Wapping station. Traces of the original pedestrian staircase are still visible to this day, as are the arches of the twin tunnels now carrying London Overground trains.